Emotiv Systems uses your thoughts to power gaming

Ars checks in from GDC09, where Emotiv Systems is showing off its new headset …

I'm standing inside Intel's booth, trying to get the image of the letter "a" to stay in my head. It's a clear image: black text, lower-case, with heavy seriffs. Apparently, this is the way my mind sees the letter "a" the clearest. On the screen in front of me, after I lock in the image, a rotating block completely disappears. I'm playing with an upcoming headset from Emotiv Systems, and I'm having a very good time.

"There are a few ways we can set this up," the rep says. "We can use the sensors to measure the muscles in your face, for instance." He shows me a set of sliders that can tell when I smile, when I wink, and whatever else my face can do. Right now we're doing cognitive training; a way of control that isolates a single strong thought and then uses that for feedback. In this case, when I conjure the letter "a" in my head, the box disappears. Any clear thought will work, and you can train as many as you can remember.

For instance, we can train for the letter "b," causing that thought to make the box rotate in a direction. It takes some time to get all this programmed in, and even more time to learn how to focus correctly in order to get clear images, but the effect is remarkable. The hardware knows what my brain is doing.

I see a few demos running on a video loop, including someone controlling a virtual face by their own expressions and a player making a tree bend to the ground simply by thinking about it. There is much you could do with this technology, especially if you link it with a regular mouse and keyboard. Imagine playing a first-person shooter where you think of your flak cannon and it switches you to that weapon. Picture a clip, and you reload. In one video when a man raises his hand, he levitates a rock in a game.

Unfortunately, there are no demos of actual games to play, although the SDK seems robust based on our demo. I ask about the price point. "We're looking at around $300," the rep tells us. "We're hoping to ship later on this year."

I thank him for his time, and take the headset off. We've attracted some attention with the demo, and a gentleman jumps up to be the next to try. I think Emotiv might be onto something.

I'm not terribly interested in gaming, but I can imagine a huge number of potential applications where this could be very helpful alongside conventional input devices or head-tracking, much like the examples that Ben suggested in the article. When I'm writing a computer program, I'd love to be able to launch my debugger or insert a code snippet just by thinking it.

I don't get it. Emotive was BIG TIME at last year’s GDC. They had a game and were taking orders to ship in 08. They were a major sponsor of the 08 GDC and had a huge booth with over 50 people manning it. The headset you show is not new since I had it on last year...now they have a pod in the Intel booth, is this a time warp or have they gone bottoms up?

I don't get it. Emotive was BIG TIME at last year’s GDC. They had a game and were taking orders to ship in 08. They were a major sponsor of the 08 GDC and had a huge booth with over 50 people manning it. The headset you show is not new since I had it on last year...now they have a pod in the Intel booth, is this a time warp or have they gone bottoms up?

I have the NIA, it's way less capable than what the Emotiv device is supposed to be able to do (i.e. far fewer sensors). The Epoch also has the advantage of being wireless.

The NIA basically reads facial muscle tension and lets you use that as either a pre-determined keypress or a control axis(this one takes a lot more personal training to use accurately).

The NIA is of course a much cheaper product, and like every other OCZ product, has some QA and poor design issues. In particular with the NIA, it has a tendency to go haywire unless the user is completely electrically grounded (you usually have to end up touching the metal NIA receiver).

I "invented" this very product for a class project back in high school, in about 1992. I rigged up a painted dummy headset with sensors on it at the temples (like this product! LOL), and pre-recorded a Super Nintendo game to be 'controlled'. Then my project partner wore the controller and 'played' the game while I gave the presentation on our fake product. Then I distracted him and made him crash his car.

Here's to hoping they get support from some decent games and a complex game doesn't confuse it. If it's more clumsy than using a keyboard then who cares... if I can jump around like a loon doing various things in the game and use it for thoes akward "i need a third hand" stuff then it would be cool even if it takes a bit to get used to it.

What happens if you accidentally think of hairy balls? Or you accidentally think of throwing a grenade at one of your team members? I think we're treading way too close to a matrix/robotapocolypse end of the human race incident. I think the idea is way cooler than it becoming reality. Kind of like when i was in 2nd grade and said, "man what if they made a Freddy VS Jason movie? Who would win?..."

Interesting product. I'm guessing the computer interface works by simulating a button press for a certain thought that you have. So you could map a "reload" thought to the 'r' key. If this is the case it's good that the device would be readily usable in existing games which is key for a niche type of product like this.

Originally posted by LuckySe7en:What happens if you accidentally think of hairy balls? Or you accidentally think of throwing a grenade at one of your team members? I think we're treading way too close to a matrix/robotapocolypse end of the human race incident. I think the idea is way cooler than it becoming reality. Kind of like when i was in 2nd grade and said, "man what if they made a Freddy VS Jason movie? Who would win?..."

I think your jumping forward a few generations of the technology. This seems more like a device where you go through and bind a very simple thought (i.e. A B C) to do something in a game that would normally be accomplished with a button press. I'm guessing they would probably make it so you could map multiple button presses like you can with the programmable G15 keys or the various gamepad things for PC's, but I doubt playing with just the thing would be possible or worth it just going from the article.

I have the NIA, it's way less capable than what the Emotiv device is supposed to be able to do (i.e. far fewer sensors). The Epoch also has the advantage of being wireless.

The NIA basically reads facial muscle tension and lets you use that as either a pre-determined keypress or a control axis(this one takes a lot more personal training to use accurately).

The NIA is of course a much cheaper product, and like every other OCZ product, has some QA and poor design issues. In particular with the NIA, it has a tendency to go haywire unless the user is completely electrically grounded (you usually have to end up touching the metal NIA receiver).

Well, fancy that, I also own the NIA.

And I guess you must have bought the older version or something, because the NIA i bought reads alpha and beta waves (6 different levels of each I think, though I generally just map things to one and the other). It also reads facial movements as well.

So basically, this thing is EXACTLY like the NIA. Only difference is the NIA has been on the market for a year.

Originally posted by LuckySe7en:What happens if you accidentally think of hairy balls? Or you accidentally think of throwing a grenade at one of your team members? I think we're treading way too close to a matrix/robotapocolypse end of the human race incident. I think the idea is way cooler than it becoming reality. Kind of like when i was in 2nd grade and said, "man what if they made a Freddy VS Jason movie? Who would win?..."

I think your jumping forward a few generations of the technology. This seems more like a device where you go through and bind a very simple thought (i.e. A B C) to do something in a game that would normally be accomplished with a button press. I'm guessing they would probably make it so you could map multiple button presses like you can with the programmable G15 keys or the various gamepad things for PC's, but I doubt playing with just the thing would be possible or worth it just going from the article.

Pretty much dead on. I hadn't actually thought of attempting to map this to multiple keystrokes. But generally, it's for 1 off button presses (ie. in cod4 I mapped it to throwing grenades and knife attacks).